Episode #267 – The Simple Gospel

(M) Yesterday I met with a young believer, a young woman that I just adore. And she came to visit and I said well let’s, let’s pray, but first I said, “What is it you need from the Lord right now?” And we were silent for a while listening, and she said, “You asked me what I need, and what I need is courage and faith, and I don’t have any.” And I knew the motive of it was to do God’s will. It wasn’t about anything else but His will. So this gal has great integrity, and I know that she wants to follow the Lord, and she’s honest enough to know what it was going to take. To do His, to go and follow His will it’s going to take courage and faith. And so I looked at her and smiled and said, “He will never give you that.” (Martha laughs.) And of course she had the look of horror that I expected her to have, and I said, “What God will give you is the courage and faith of Christ. But He will never take the courage of Christ and implant it in you, and He will never help you get courage. And I said, you must understand, this is the Gospel, Christ within you, the hope of glory.” And I said where… and this is how the Lord gave it, gave it to me to express it. (J) And this is why I want you to, to say it, because it’s absolutely perfect, how you said it. When you said it to me I went, ‘Oh my God!’ Wow. (John and Martha are laughing.) Wow. So I just want you to, to say it, because I think it’s something that’s very, very basic, but that’s untouched. (M) Right. And I told her, when I got her… Let me take you where I went with her. And this is what He gave me. “What He wants you to do, He does. What He wants you to be, He is. Where He wants you to go, He goes. What you need is Him. There’s nothing else that you need, but Him. And His life is to dwell in you.” And John, you’ve heard me say in the first century they were able to teach the new believer’s that Christ is the Life; “For me to live is Christ”, “Christ in me, the hope of glory”, “I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live; the life I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” They were able to convey that. You know what our problem is? (J) Independence and wanting to do it our self. (M) That is it, and it’s the age of Laodicea. We depend on our vast knowledge of God, of the Bible, of Greek and Hebrew, of history and custom and logic, and we are rich in knowledge. And what is knowledge? (J) (John makes a funny noise.) (Martha laughs.) (M) Give it to me a little more verbally. It’s the temptation of Eden, to have knowledge instead of God. And knowledge puffeth up, it is love that builds. So I told her, I said, I’m going to show you the real Gospel. But you will not find it in any realm of Christianity as what everybody knows. And you will have… It will be your message. It will be your message, that where He sends me, He goes. What He asks of me, He does. And I said what you need is not courage and faith, what you need is Christ’s courage and faith. And in Him, you will have it. It will never be given to you apart from Him. Our prayers, as a general Christianity of today, and this age, is help me Lord to do what you want me to do. God doesn’t want you to do anything. (J) Because when you say you need Christ’s courage, what we normally hear, and what I have normally heard is that He’s going to impart His courage in me, and that I’m going to have His courage and go and… Really that is, in a nutshell, with everybody, in a nutshell, that’s what is associated with every requirement of God, is that His purity will be in me, and that I’ll be able to live out of His purity. But the skew is that I will somehow possess His purity, His faith, His worship, but I don’t possess His faith, His worship, His purity, (Martha adds: His character.) His character, I am possessed by Him. And then He does it. (M) So when I said this, and I explained it a little bit to her, that she would have Him. I said He’s been given to you, all that He is He’s given to you. You have received every, every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And she ‘got it’. Her face lit up, she grinned this big grin and she said, “That’s so easy.” (J) Hmhmm. (M) And I said yes, the Christian life is the easiest life in the world, but honey, it took me twenty years to discover it, and twenty more years to begin to let Him be my life. And you can go out on your adventure with God, with this information. And I said, you can let Him be all. She really got it, John. And I’ve always wanted to take a new believer and give them that basis that Christ is. And see, what you said is we think He will take a portion of Himself and give it to us as we need it. He will give me His courage. No, no, no, that’s not it either. He is in all that He is mine; He’s mine! And as I’m His. (J) You’ve said it, you’ve said it in a sentence; you’ve said all the requirements of the New Testament are to Him, not to me. You’ve said it, but somehow when you said, when you said it the way you said it yesterday, I was all of a sudden like going, ok, now that is very, very clear. (M) Hmhmm. Very simple, and very clear. (J) Its genius. God gave you a genius answer for her, anointed genius answer for her. Simple, to the point, it wasn’t a long dialogue. It just was very clear, crisp, and ‘pow’! (M) Oh, well, let me say it again. “What He wants me to do, He does. What He wants me to be, He is. Where He wants me to go, He goes. And what I need is Him, and all that He is.” And we were so excited. And she was released. She, she got faith in hearing that. (J) Absolutely. (M) That she… And I said, you will have whatever you need. And I said I used to get on the floor and cry about my insufficiency. (Martha laughs.) When people first started coming I would say, “Oh God, I know nothing, I have nothing, I can do nothing, please, please, please God, give me something.” And I said I don’t lay on the floor anymore, because I know that I’m absolutely inadequate, insufficient, unable to be or do or go anywhere; that He is everything I need. And I said… I did a tape that clearly gave that testimony in San Francisco. And I meant to ask you. You would know which one it is when I give the, the story of my discovery of the exchanged life. I can’t remember the name of it. But I told her I would ask you to send it to her. (J) The CD series is “The Way,” and it was the most powerful message that you had given about the exchanged life. And I was completely amazed at it. And you gave it in Antioch, California, and we were out there, and we were invited to speak in a festival, worship festival. And basically your message to me was the message that basically the singing and dancing wasn’t the worship. The worship was the offering of your body to be indwelt by Christ, so that Christ could live His Life through you, you as an empty vessel. (M) Well, you know, the audience has so much to do with whether the anointing is pulled out of you. And that audience, it was a black Church; they were wonderful; I fell in love with them. They were so enthused; they so ‘got it’. They were so receptive that they drank that, and the more they drank, the more anointed I was. And there were many other speakers, but the pastor stood up and implied ‘this is the message’. (J) Which it was; it was clear that it was. (M) Hmhmm. So, it was such fun. I just had such rejoicing the whole time during that. But that’s the one that I want to give her. The new temple is my body. The new worship is letting Him live. So the Lord is for the body, and the body is for the Lord. And that, that’s what I wanted her to have. (J) I’ll make sure she gets it. (M) So see, the simplicity of that, we don’t… because we find it so hard to get down to that simplicity, we really believe the Christian life is so hard and so impossible, and it’s because we’re trying. And, and we want, many of us want to do it right, and do it for the Lord, and many of us, many of Christianity want to; and she did. She sincerely wanted to follow Him and had the integrity to tell the truth about her deficit. And so because she was that honest, she got the answer given to her. That was given specifically to her, because I’ve never said it in that way before, have I? (J) No, that’s just very, very succinct, very clear and very crisp. (M) Hmhmm. So, I never dreamed of recording it, but thank you. Maybe it will, it will impact someone else.

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